Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Some Back to School Thoughts

Mark Twain, dropped
out of school at the age of twelve. H.G. Wells at eleven. Jack London at
thirteen. Ever heard of Ray Bradbury? Stieg Larsson? Agatha Christie? Herman
Melville? None of them went to college. Here are some more great quotes from not so great
students, but very great writers.

“Finally, from so
little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely
out of his mind.” MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA

Get your facts first,
and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Don't go around saying
the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

I have never let my
schooling interfere with my education. MARK TWAIN

An archaeologist is the
best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in
her.

It is a curious
thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize
just how much you love them.

The best time to plan a
book is while you're doing the dishes. AGATHA CHRISTIE

It is better to fail in
originality than to succeed in imitation.

Better sleep with a
sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. HERMAN MELVILLE

Remember how when you
were in kindergarten and it seemed like the most important things were having
the right lunchbox, the best cookies at the lunch table, and the coolest shoes?

And then when you're in sixth grade and everyone is wearing
Star Jeans, and it seems like you're cast into social hell if you're not
wearing a big star on your bum?

Or when you're in high school, and you think you'll die if
you don't get a part in the play, or a solo in the concert, or a place on the
team?

Or when you're in college and your entire life and future
career depends on your score on the GMAT, LSAT, or MCAT?

Or when you're employed and you think you'll never be able to support yourself and your family if you're not made a partner, or an officer,
or a board member?

Do you think that maybe when we die and we get to the other
side, we'll realize that the lunch boxes, Star Jeans, the teams, the scores,
and positions were all things that we had to let go, and that the only things
we get to keep and hold is the love of the people around us?

I’m all for getting a
good education from brilliant teachers, but it’s important to remember that
life with all its disappointments, frustrations, and kicks in the head, is by
far the best text book, and, consequently, the prime tutorial for writing.

What are your thoughts on going back to school, even if your school is the hard-knocks sort?

Kristy Tate is a USA
Today bestselling author. Sign up for her newsletter and receive a free book,
please visit http://www.kristytate.com/

How a High School Dance is
Like the Courting Rituals Found in the Animal Kingdom

By Evelynn Marston

The animal kingdom is rife
with courtship rituals. These are generally initiated by the males who attempt
to woo female partners.

Some animals, like the
bowerbird, will collect a tower of objects to impress his love. The great
grebe, who mates for life, has a series of dance moves to perform throughout
the mating season. If, for any reason, the pair is separated, they will each
bust a move when reunited. The male peacock spreads his tail feathers and
struts around.

The praying mantis
literally risks his life for a night of love. If his lady dislikes his
performance, she bites his head off.

A male nursery web spider
will present a little bundle of food wrapped in pretty white silk to the female
as a request to mate. If the female likes the present, the two will mate while
she unwraps and eats the meal. Sadly, sometimes the male will try to bring a
wrapped twig. When this happens, the relationship is dead in the water.

It might be thought that
courtship only occurs in the kinds of animals that have fairly complex brains,
such as mammals and birds. This is not the case as the school dances at Hartly
High clearly demonstrate!

Mr. Cox put down my essay
and wannabe newspaper article and smiled with a gaze that glittered with
excitement. "Are you willing to attend the dance--not as a participant,
but as a spectator?"

"Absolutely," I
said.

"This is the hallmark
of a true journalist," he told me. "You must be able to put aside
your own desires. As a reporter, you cease to be an individual with your own
petty goals. Your function is to be a communication vessel--a transmitter to
the world."

I nodded, mute with
happiness.

#

"You agreed to
what?" Bree asked at her house later that night.

I pushed my hair off my
forehead and looked across the kitchen table at my best friend. Studying at my
own house, where there was no one but Scratch, our bulldog, and the sound of
Uncle Mitch's lab rats scurrying in their cages to interrupt us, was quieter
and therefore boring compared to hanging at Bree's.

"I'm not going to the
dance, per se, as a person." I had expected this conversation and had
prepared for it. "I'm going as a journalist."

"So you are going and
you can get me a ticket."

"You know only
upperclassmen can go."

Lincoln, Bree's little
brother, burst into the room wearing nothing but his tighty-whities.
"Where are the cookies?" he demanded. His pale skin stretched across
his bony chest.

Lincoln scooted a kitchen
chair up to the counter for a quick cookie-surveillance and took note of
backpacks, textbooks, novels, scribbled-on bits of paper, a baseball card
collection. His eyes lit up when he spotted a half-eaten chocolate bunny,
probably left over from Easter.

Bree ignored her little
brother. "But the Blazing Blizzards!"

"Norfolk High will
probably have a great band too."

"That's so not
true," Bree said.

"The guys at your
school are hotter."

Lincoln stood on his chair
and nibbled on one of the bunny's ears.

"What makes you say
that?" Bree asked.

"Well, they don't have
to wear Hartly’s uniform, for one thing."

In the living room, the
front door opened and Bree’s older sister Candace walked in with a friend
wearing a chicken suit. A cold breeze circled the room until the door slammed
shut.

"What the quack?"
Lincoln asked.

"It's 'what the
cluck,'" the girl in the chicken suit corrected him with a giggle.

Candace’s friend had masses
of blond hair tucked into a hoodie covered with yellow feathers. She wore the
beak on top of her head like a rhino horn.

"You look
stupid," Lincoln told her.

"Thanks," the
girl said.

"What are you supposed
to be?"

"I'm a chick,"
she told him right before she lowered the beak over her nose.

"But why?"
Lincoln demanded.

"You'll see," the
girl said. The beak bobbed up and down with her muffled words.

"School play try-outs
already?" I asked Bree in a hushed tone as soon as the chick and Candace
ran up the back stairs.

"I don't think
so," Bree said.

"Are the dogs
outside?" Candace called from upstairs.

Lincoln jumped off his
chair. "Why?" he demanded. "They have just as much right as you
do to be in here."

"Just take them
out!" Candace called back.

"They're not
here," Bree yelled.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know,"
Bree answered.

"Well, keep them
out."

"Why?" Lincoln
asked.

The smell of fried chicken
fried wafted down the stairs.

"What
the...cluck?" Bree pushed back from the table and went into the front
room.

I followed.

Candace and the chick were
dropping a trail of chicken nuggets that started at the front door and ran up
the stairs.

"She won't care,"
Candace said as she dropped chicken nuggets on the floor.

"Uncle Mitch
would," I said under my breath.

Bree nodded. “I don’t think
Mom is going to like it, but the dogs will."

"Bree," Candace
called. "Come help."

I trailed up the stairs
after Bree and followed the nuggets into the bathroom. The chick lay in the
bathtub and Candace stood beside her with a roll of plastic wrap in her hands.
"We're going to make it look like she's swimming in nuggets."

Bree gawked at the large
tinfoil baking pans. "You must have spent a hundred dollars on
nuggets!"

"Three hundred and
twenty-five dollars," the girl announced from her prone position in the
tub.

"But why?"
Lincoln pushed into the room.

Candace nodded at the sign
hung on the white tile above the tub. It read, "Josh, you'd be a clucking
fool not to go to the dance with this hot chick."

Lincoln bolted and waved
his chocolate bunny in the air. "I want nothing to do with this!" he
yelled over his naked shoulder.

I hoped Josh, Bree’s older
brother, would feel the same. "I gotta go," I said, hating that I was
following Lincoln's lead.

"Don't you want to be
here when Josh sees this?" Bree asked as she helped Candace drop nuggets
into the bathtub.

"Not really." I
headed out, taking care not to step on the nuggets. I pictured how the rest of
the evening would go. Mrs. Henderson’s lips would be tight with anger over the
greasy spots left on the carpet. The dogs would scarf up as many nuggets as
they could before any of the Hendersons would realize that the overload of
chicken would make them sick. The dogs would barf and then there would be more
than oily stains on the carpet. And Josh…he’d have a date to the dance.

I didn’t want to be there
when any of that happened.

#

Melissa Blankly cornered me
the next day in the cafeteria. "I know what you're doing," she said,
poking me in the chest with her red bejeweled fingernail.

"What are you talking
about?" I swatted her hand away and all her bracelets tinkled in response.

She gave me her best
mean-girl smile. "You're just reporting on the dance so you can get
in."

"Uh, no."

She narrowed her eyes,
making her fake lashes look like centipede legs. She opened her mouth to utter
another bit of stupidity but closed it fast.

I looked over my shoulder
to see why.

Robbie Fisher, the
editor-in-chief of the Hartly Herald, strode our way. He placed a large, heavy
hand on my shoulder. "Hey, I read the article you submitted to Cox. Good
stuff!"

"Thanks!" I
responded, flushing from his praise and nearness.

Robbie was one of the few
guys who could wear the Hartly uniform without looking like a dweeb. In fact,
with his towering height and broad shoulders, he looked better than most of the
males at Hartly, faculty included. "I can't wait to read the rest of
it," he said.

"Well, I can't
actually finish it until after the dance," I told him.

"Yeah." He nudged
me as if we shared a joke. "I got that."

Melissa fluttered her
eyelashes at him, but as soon as he left, she ramped up her glare. "Have
fun at the dance." It sounded like a threat, but what could she do?

#

The Hendersons’ van pulled
up in front of my house the next morning, and Josh tooted the horn. I snagged a
muffin off the kitchen table, called goodbye to Uncle Mitch and waved at Mrs.
Mateo, our housekeeper, on my way out. After settling in the back seat of the
van beside Bree, I gave Josh sitting behind the steering wheel a glance under
my lashes. Football had changed him from the lanky kid he used to be. "Is
he going to the dance with the chick?" I whispered to Bree.

Bree nodded. "You
really should have stuck around. It was pretty hilarious."

"Shut it, Bree,"
Josh growled without looking at her as he put the van in gear. His voice had
also dropped an octave in the last year or so.

"One of the twins let
the dogs in," Bree continued.

"Oh no!"

"Yeah," Lincoln
piped in. "That was before Josh got home."

"And then Penguin
started vomiting," said Gabby, Bree’s baby sister.

"Oh no!" I
repeated as if I was surprised. Which I wasn’t.

"So basically, Josh
followed dog vomit up the stairs," Bree said.

"Mom was so mad!"
Lincoln said.

"Shut it,
Lincoln," Josh growled as he shifted the van into second gear.

"Josh has to pay for
the carpet cleaner," Bree told her.

"Oh, that's not really
fair," I said. "I mean, it wasn't his idea--"

"We had to all clean
our rooms before the Magic Carpet people came," Gabby said.

"And there isn't even
a real magic carpet," one of the twins said.

"Yeah," the identical
brother chirped. "It's dumb because it's just a name. They don't fly or
anything."

"They don't even pick
up stuff--we had to do that," Gabby huffed.

“So, we all pretty much
hate that chick,” Lincoln said.

I caught Josh's eye in the
rearview mirror. His cheeks flooded with color before he fixed his attention on
the road.

Later, in my history class,
while Mr. Benson talked about the bubonic plague, I thought about how I would
ask someone to a dance. I wouldn't spread chicken nuggets around, and I definitely
wouldn't call myself a hot chick. I also wouldn't wear a chicken costume. I
almost felt sorry for Josh because how could he say no to someone who had spent
hundreds of dollars on chicken nuggets/dog treats?

The bell rang before I
could come up with my own clever, inexpensive, and not barfing-bad way to ask a
guy to a dance.

Troy stood beside my desk
and blinked at me through his glasses. The lenses were so thick, they distorted
his eyes, giving him a Yoda appearance.

"I'd be honored to go
to the dance with you," he said.

We had never actually
spoken before, and the normalcy of his voice surprised me. Almost as much as
his words. "What?" It was my turn to blink at him.

"The dance," he
said. "Thanks for asking. I'd be happy to take you."

"But...I didn't ask
you to the dance."

He started to stutter.
"Y-you wrote me a letter." He fished in his backpack.

"It must have been a
different Evelynn," I told him.

"You're the only
Evelynn I know," he said.

I thought about pointing
out that we really didn't know each other at all, even though we'd been going
to the same school since kindergarten...well, since I was in kindergarten and
he was in second grade since he was two grades ahead of me.

He slapped a handwritten
note on the desk separating us. Sure enough, it had my name on it, and above
that was an invitation to the dance.

"I got the same
note." Harrison stood beside Troy and his chin sank to his chest, coming
just inches above the Justin Bieber pin fastened to the lapel of his navy blue
blazer.

"You did?" My
voice squeaked. I cleared it and tried to sound normal.

"I knew it was too
good to be true," Harrison said as he scrounged through his leather book
bag. Moments later, he pulled out an identical note.

"You could go with
both of us," Troy said hopefully.

Harrison looked up and met
Troy's gaze. They seemed to come to a silent agreement. "I'd be okay with
that."

"But...I'm sorry. I
didn't write those. I can't go with a date to the dance. I'm going as a
reporter for the Herald."

"I thought only
upperclassmen could be on the paper," Troy said.

"Sometimes Cox lets
sophomores write guest pieces so he can know who can make the paper as
juniors," Harrison told him.

"But I want to write
the article. I want a ticket onto the paper, not to a dance."

The guys both seemed to
deflate.

"You can find someone
else to go with." I gathered up my books and headed for the science
building.

"Yeah? Like who?"
Troy demanded, trailing after me.

"I don't know. Who do
you want to go with?"

"You," Troy said.

I blew out a breath.
"I'm not going to the dance with you! Either of you! I'm sorry!"

"You don't sound
sorry," Harrison said before shuffling away in the opposite direction.

"I think you're going
to change your mind," Troy said, matching my stride. "When we get to
the dance, you're going to feel awkward and alone--being the only sophomore
there and all. You'll be glad for my company."

"You better go to
class." The bell rang before I could add something mean. I knew the guys
weren’t to blame. This situation reeked of Melissa.

Troy gave me a determined
smile before trotting down the hall.

In biology, I took my usual
seat near the window. Most of the class were already in their chairs, but Mr.
Beck hadn't arrived yet. Just then the four Lounge Lizards, the barbershop
quartet who frequently serenaded students in the cafeteria, positioned
themselves in the front of the room directly across from Chester the rat's
cage.

"Dance with me when
the sun is high," the Lounge Lizards broke out in four-part harmony.
"Dance with me beneath the stars."

Frankel jumped onto a table
and wailed, "Let me be with you when the moon is bl-u-e."

Laughter surrounded me and
thundered in my ears. Chester the rat squeaked and scampered in his cage. The
flames warming the Bunsen burners turned blue and crackled. The electricity in
the air fizzled and I felt it lifting my hair off the back of my neck. Heat
crawled up my spine and flushed my cheeks. I held out my hands to beg Frankel
to stop. The Bunsen burners flashed. The air sparked.

Just then, I was seven
years old again and my parents were yelling. My father called my mother a
whore. My mother called my father a controlling oaf. The mirror in the hallway
shattered. Shards flew around the room like dancing bits of stars caught in a
wind tunnel. Stunned, my parents hushed.

"And now we're
throwing things. Very mature, Sophia," my dad said.

"I didn't throw
anything," my mom said.

Both my parents looked at
me.

Screaming shook me out of
the memory. Students trampled to exit the room now shimmering in silver smoke.
Flames crept up the walls. Colors flashed around me, and I fell to my knees.

Someone grabbed me and
lifted me up. I couldn't see her face, but she was small, wiry, and reminded me
of my mother. "Mom?"

"She's
delirious," a deep voice said.

"Crazy," said a
girl's voice—Melissa’s. "She'll do anything for a newspaper story."

My knees buckled as I
stumbled outside. All around me, kids stood huddled in groups--girls holding
each other, boys trying to hide their shock. Teachers yelled at everyone to
stay back as the fire consumed what had once been the science building.

A small cheer went up as a
kid ducked out of the building holding Chester the rat's cage over his head.
Sirens sounded in the distance.

I braced myself against a
tree and watched the chaos around me. This is what it's like to witness an
ending, I thought. Just like the broken mirror had marked the end of my
parents’ marriage, I knew that with the destruction of the science building,
somehow my life at Hartly would never be the same. It wouldn't be just a matter
of new microscopes, desks, tables, chairs, periodic tables, Petri
dishes--although all those things would have to be replaced.

Everything would be
different now because people would treat me differently, even though I would
still be, basically, the same person.